60s Motown Kit

by DrumDrops

To recreate the 60s Motown drum sound is almost impossible. Kits varied from session to session as did the drummers, heads and equipment but Producer / drummer Timmy Rickard studied the sound and we think we nailed it. Recorded in a large live room at Livingston 1 studio in London, the room was mic’d up as if there was a full Motown band in the room – brass section, vocal mic, talkback mic and then two mics on the kit – a kick, and a kit mic placed above the bass drum, between the rack toms and below the ride. Mix these mics into a 60s kit and voila the 60s Motown drum sound is created.

For the kit we used Timmy’s 1960s Ludwig club date kit with a 20” x 14” kick drum one 12” x 8” rack tom and a 14” floor tom. Four snares were used – two Ludwig Pioneer Snares, a Ludwig Hollywood Snare and a Slingerland Shelbyville Snare. We used two cymbals, a Zildjian Trans Stamp and a Zildjian Constantinople Hammered cymbal (both doubled up as rides and crashes) and some Zildjian vintage hi-hats. Across the tracks there is tambourine, claps and congas. All the drums used Remo Ambassador heads. Mic wise we used Neumann Valve U47’s & 67s, Coles ribbon mics, a Sony C38b and an AKG Valve C28. Mic pre’s used were UA2-610’s, Telefunken V76s and a Neve 1073. All of the mics were recorded without EQ or compression except the overhead microphone which used an EAR vale EQ and compressor.

As well as the kit we include some percussion samples – congos, a tambourine and hand claps. Due to the number of mics we used to capture the sound the separate mic packs come with a lot of samples. In the Kontakt and BFD packs there are over 30,000 samples used to recreate this kit. We think you will love this 60s Motown Kit.

Like Other Drumdrops Kits This Can be Purchased in Seven Different Packs

The Kontakt 5 Pack comes with the version 2 Drumdrops Kontakt Instrument for exclusive use in the latest version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5. The interface comes with it’s own mixer section giving you control over the individual drum tracks. Each channel has an EQ and multiple effects You can change the velocity curves of the drums and there is a randomisation feature to add subtle changes to make the drums even more realistic. The Kontakt pack comes with 53 separate articulations, 24 velocity steps (30 on the kick and snares) and it includes 5 round robins. In this kit our Kontakt feature known as Mic Blend comes into its own. You can control the balance of all of the microphones positioned around the room (the drum sound in Motown Kits came from the mics in the rest of the room blended into the kit mics). This means the Kontakt pack comes loaded with over 30,000 samples. The pack also comes with 3231 MIDI loops with 245 Motown loops.

The BFD Pack is a pack that can be loaded into BFD2 or BFD3. The BFD pack contains over 30,000 samples. It contains 51 articulations that our other packs have and the kit has been recorded in up to 240 velocity steps. You have full control over the five microphones that were used to record this kit and once loaded into BFD you can enjoy all the same features that you would expect from any other BFD kit. Once the kit has been recognized by BFD, just simply select your desired kit piece from the list in the same way that you would load any other drum in BFD. The pack also includes fifteen groove palettes with 245 60s Motown MIDI Loops.

The Multi-Sample pack provides up to 24 velocity steps of each articulation (30 on the kick and snares). Each sample included in this pack is a mix of the kit mics and all the ‘band’ mics. This pack comes with patches for Battery 3, Kontakt 5.5, EXS24, Maschine, Geist, Studio One’s Impact Soundset, Ableton Drum Rack, iDrum, Reason Refills, TX16Wx and SFZ (which is 1.0 compliant and has been tested with Plogue Sforzando and Cakewalk SFZ) but the samples can be used in any drum machine or sampler that reads 24 bit WAV files. We also include 16 bit samples for old school samplers. Some of the software patches (Battery, EXS24, SFZ and Kontakt) also support round robin samples. We have included three round robin samples of each velocity for added realism. The multi-sample pack now includes 1543 MIDI drum loops covering a variety of genres and 124 60s Motown loops. This pack is a great choice for those who want multiple velocity articulations. The pack comes with 2766 samples.

The Drum Replacement pack is our sample replacement pack. This pack comes with three different patches – Slate Trigger V2, Drumagog V5 & V4 and DrumXchanger. Each patch uses different amounts of samples depending on the capability of the software. If you run any of these pieces of software then this pack is for you.

The All Samples pack contains the Multi-sample Pack, the Drum Replacement Pack and the 30,000 separate mic samples from the Kontakt 5 Pack. This pack gives you ultimate flexibility. You get all the patches we create and three different packs of samples. It does not contain our Kontakt instrument which can only be found in the Kontakt pack. In this kit we have also included an SFZ 2.0 compliant patch which has been tested with Plogue Sforzando and it uses the separate mic samples.

The One Shot Sample pack is our cheapest pack and a great pack for those who either just need one sample from each articulation (drum machine users) and no patches or for customers who want to check out the sound of this kit before purchasing any of the more expensive packs. Ask us nicely and we will knock the price of this pack off other packs for this kit if you upgrade.

Whichever pack you choose you can be reassured that is has the Drumdrops quality stamped all over it. Explore more of these pages to read about the kit and work out which pack is best for you. If you want a 60s Motown drum sound then this is kit for you. If you can’t wait to get your hands on these packs then check out our drum track demos from the 60s Motown drops album – these drum tracks were recorded using this very kit with the same mics in the same studio, and you can listen to them by hovering your mouse arrow over the main product graphics above and clicking/scrolling right. All the tracks are available to buy as multi-tracks, stem packs and drum loops. We think this kit is awesome. Let us know what you think.

The Drum Kit

Most people will know of the reputation of Ludwig drums, famously used by Ringo Starr from a little known 60s Liverpudlian band, and later by John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. They sound fantastic, warm and responsive with a lovely dark tone from the thin three ply mahogany, poplar and maple shells with maple reinforcing hoops. Made before music became really amplified and loud, these drums were designed to sound good rather than generate loads of volume and as such they are wonderfully full and tonal, especially when recorded and mic’d up. Although obviously a 1960s kit, drummers continued to use this model though the 70s, and do so to this very day in fact… they just record so well. The drums are shallower than many modern drums which helps focus their sound and control their decay.

We used Timmy’s 1960s Ludwig club date kit with a 20” x 14” kick drum, one 12” x 8” rack tom and a 14” floor tom. Four snares were used – two Ludwig Pioneer Snares, a Ludwig Hollywood Snare and a Slingerland Shelbyville Snare. We used two cymbals a Zildjian Trans Stamp and a Zildjian Constantinople Hammered cymbal (both doubled up as rides and crashes) and some Zildjian vintage hi-hats. We also sampled a tambourine, claps and congas. All the drums used Remo Ambassador heads

The Studio

The Recording Studio – Miloco Livingston 1 Studio, UK

Miloco’s Livingston Studio 1 is located in Wood Green, North London. The studio has been recently completely overhauled and has a great range of gear to complement it’s varied recording rooms. With a history spanning many decades the studio has welcomed artists such as The Clash, Buena Vista Social Club, Bjork, Depeche Mode and Jesus and Mary Chain.

The control room is based around an SSL G-Series console but we mainly focused on the outboard gear, focusing on the valve pre-amps for this one. The room has a great collection of microphones including many valve microphones that we used to record this kit. Recording is usually done on the Pro Tools HDX rig with HD I/O convertors.

Once we had recorded the kit we ‘mixed’ the samples through a Custom Series CS75 Powered by Neve in Miloco Livingston 2. This is a modern day console based on vintage Neve circuitry and added a good vintage colour to the samples.

The Recording Equipment

The equipment used was minimal. We used only two mics close to the kit and the other mics were setup in the room for an imaginary brass section, talk back microphone and vocal microphone. The signal passed through the vintage external mic pre’s and then into Pro Tools to keep the noise floor low on the quiet samples.

Mic wise we used Neumann Valve U47’s & 67s, Coles ribbon mics, a Sony C38b and an AKG Valve C28. Mic pre’s used were UA2-610’s, Telefunken V76s and a Neve 1073. All of the mics were recorded without EQ or compression except the overhead microphone which used an EAR valve EQ and compressor.

The Microphones

Kick – Neumann U67 – Universal Audio UA2-610

This was positioned about 2 feet away from the centre of the back of the kick drum, aimed at the centre.

“I saw the wrecking crew using it in a photo… and I feel that ‘both heads on’ a jazz style kick, sounds nice using a condenser rather that your more beater heavy kick sound that’s normally mic’d using a dynamic. Also looks cool!” TR

Timmy Rickard is a South London based drummer, composer, engineer and producer, and the founder of Monosole Music. Timmy has toured all over the world as a live drummer, but his heart is in the recording studio. He is often found working on various projects with different producers in studios across the UK and Europe, and also at his own studio in South London. This is where Timmy spends his time producing and mixing tracks for various artists, but mainly recording drum tracks, championing his less is more approach to engineering.

Timmy is a big fan of the 60s Motown drum sound and as well as playing the drums produced the session.